I'm no longer in Kansas, Toto!

[Andrea164]

Ah, the NorCal Coast tourist season is upon us.   In previous years a few critical May weekends were responsible for generating most of my summer bookings.   Not now.   In fact, my reservations have dropped off the proverbial "map ", literal calendar. What's the major malfunction?  Maybe there's new competition muscleing in on my hospitality business.  I switch to traveling and search for stays in Manchester,  CA, skipping over the dates as well as the number of guests.  My two neighbors a half a mile down the street and two miles down respectively are at the top of the search results.  Curious, not requiring minimum two night stays and not shutting down for the winter always resulted in a higher occupancy rate and consequently put me above them in search results.  I scroll down to see if there are any new faces on the block.  Fifteen pages and "1000 listings" later, 13 of which are for places over half an hour away, I realize that my listing is no where to be seen.   I repeat the search this time using the "rooms" category.  Still nothing.  Okay, I then look for my exact listing name, town and state.  Strike three, this can't be.  So I log out, then check the mobile app.  My 7 year superhost listing has vanished from the airbnb search results.

I  contact the dedicated Superhost support team and am advised not to worry she can see my listing and sends me a link to it.  Yes,  but how do people searching the platform find it?  She can't see it either and says she'll look into it and get back to me and sends me a message memorializing our conversation.  Next day I am checking our message thread when I see that my case has been closed.

I call back and this time the support Ambassador says my listing might be mia due to "saturation".  Come again?  Yes I heard her right and even understood her correctly to mean that due to the 15-page selection, 13 of which are nowhere near me, my superhost listing could not be squeezed in on page 16.  I tried to maintain composure and simply requested that she have the technical team contact me ASAP.  She explained that that would not transpire, but if she felt it was needed, she would reach out and consult with them.  Silly me, I thought the techies would offer some conclusory factors, some objective basis for my unlikely predicament when we had just established that my listing's missing due to saturation.

This was yesterday.  No word/response/resolution yet.  In the meantime,  does anyone at airbnb care that I'm missing out on one of the most critical booking weekend of the season?  If they do, they're not letting me in on it.

Don't know about you, but it feels somewhat surreal on my end.  Anyone else in the same boat?  Please let me know. 

[Ruth413]

@Andrea164   I did a search for your listing and when I put in Manchester, California you showed up on the 1st page and placed 7th.  Hope this puts your mind at rest.

Ruth 

[Pat271]

@Andrea164 

I’ve written about this extensively before, if you take a look at my past posts and comments. The crux of the matter is here - search for my comment in this post:

https://community.withairbnb.com/t5/Host-Circle/Airbnb-Search-Discrimination-of-Poorer-Neighborhoods...

(NOTE TO ADMINS: Just so you know, my comment to the above post has nothing to do with discrimination of poorer neighborhoods, and I don’t believe there is that type of discrimination happening).

I also can’t see your listing, at least on the first few pages - I didn’t scroll further than that. @Ruth413 , if you have ever been to the listing before in the browser, even via clicking on Andrea’s profile here, the property gets cached and will usually come up on the first page of your search results. Perhaps this is why you are able to see it on the first page and I am not. You have to either go to another browser, or search in Incognito mode.

If you don’t wan’t to search through the link above for my comment, the gist of it is that on a general search, Airbnb is indeed widening the radius of the search results to include areas not asked for, and removing selected listings even if they are exactly in the area the guest wants. This is happening on my listing as well - my listing often does not show up anywhere on a general search.

However, on my listing, if I put in available dates, my listing does show up. So…my bookings are limited to those guests who know exactly when they want to travel to my location. They cannot simply peruse the area to see what is available and see my listing, and THEN decide when they want to travel. There are a good number of guests who use this approach when planning a vacation, unfortunately.

I have had to register my listing on other platforms in order to attempt to recoup the loss of bookings.

[Ruth413]

@Pat271   How very strange.  I searched incognito as I know it will pop up if I don't.  It was on my computer, so I will have a go on the mobile app and see what happens then.

[Ruth413 · Accepted solution]

@Pat271.   Searched on app, couldn't find it at first but then changed from a weeks stay to any weekend and it was there.  Went back to computer (incognito).  Searched any week, couldn't find it so changed to weekend and it was on the first page.  Do you have a maximum stay over under a week ? @Andrea164 

[Andrea164]

Ruth, you're a genius.  That has to be it.  I have a 4 day max. set.  I'll update that to a week and see what happens just as soon as I take care of current guests.  I'll let you know. 

[Ruth413]

@Andrea164   I hope that works.  I found this out because of the last summers update.  I had a 3 night minimum stay and because of that I didn't show up at all for weekend stays so I had to change to 2 night minimum stay to get some bookings !  

[Andrea164]

That's it!  Shows up every time now.  I changed it around noon yesterday and got 3 bookings in the afternoon.  I can't thank you enough.  Still can't believe two of their associates were stumped and never got back to me with the solution.  You're awesome!

[Ruth413]

@Andrea164   Wonderful that the bookings are coming back in !  It is just a shame that we get hidden if we set our boundaries regarding length of stays.  Very happy I could help though !

[Nur785]

@Andrea164 Similar to @Ruth413, I did an incognito search for Manchester CA for any weekend in May and June and got your listing on the first page in the 9th space. 

I hope this helps.